IBM Lotus Notes

This article or section includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (August 2008)

Lotus Notes
IBM Lotus Notes 8 default home screen
Developed by	IBM
Initial release	1989
Stable release	8.0.2  (August 26, 2008) [+/−]
Preview release	[1]  () [+/−]
Written in	Java/Eclipse (8.x Standard) and C++ (8.x Basic and previous versions)
Platform	Cross-platform
Available in	English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese,Tamil.
Type	Collaborative software
License	Proprietary
Website	IBM Lotus Notes

Lotus Notes is a client-server, collaborative application developed and sold by IBM Software Group. IBM defines the software as an "integrated desktop client option for accessing business e-mail, calendars and applications on [an] IBM Lotus Domino server."^[1].

Features

The Notes client is mainly used as an email client, but also acts as an instant messaging client (for Lotus Sametime), browser, notebook, and calendar/resource reservation client, as well as a platform for interacting with collaborative applications.

In the early days of the product, the most common applications were threaded discussions and simple contact management databases. Today Notes also provides blogs, wikis, RSS aggregators, CRM and Help Desk systems, and organizations can build a variety of custom applications for Notes using Domino Designer.

The Notes client can be used as an IMAP and POP e-mail client with non-domino mail servers. Recipient addresses can be retrieved from any LDAP server, including Active Directory. The client also does web browsing although it can be configured to launch the default browser instead.

Features include group calendaring and scheduling, SMTP/MIME-based e-mail, NNTP-based news support, and automatic HTML conversion of all documents by the Domino HTTP task.

Notes' integration with IBM's Sametime instant messaging allows users to see other users online and conduct chat sessions with them. A chat session can be with one person or multiple people. Beginning with Release 6.5 this functionality is built into the Notes client and presence awareness is available in email and other Notes applications for users in organizations that use both Notes and Sametime.

Since version 7, Notes has provided a web services interface. Domino can be a web server for HTML files too; authentication of access to Domino databases or HTML files uses Domino's own user directory and external systems such as Microsoft's Active Directory.

A design client is available to allow rapid development of databases consisting of forms, which allow users to create documents; and views, which display selected document fields in columns.

In addition to being a groupware system (e-mail, calendaring, shared documents and discussions), Notes/Domino is also a platform for developing customized client-server and web applications. Its use of design constructs and code provide capabilities that facilitate the construction of "workflow" type applications (which may typically have complex approval processes and routing of data).

Since Release 5, Lotus server clustering has been capable of providing geographic redundancy for servers.

Data replication

The first release of Notes included a generalized replication facility. The generalized nature of this feature set it apart from predecessors like Usenet and continues to differentiate Notes from many other systems that now offer some form of synchronization or replication. The facility in Notes and Domino is not limited to email, calendar, and contacts. It works for any data in any application that uses NSF files, which are the standard container for data in the Notes architecture, for its storage. No special programming, tagging, or other configuration is required to enable replication.

Domino servers and Notes clients identify NSF files by their Replica IDs and keep files with matching IDs synchronized by bidirectionally exchanging data, metadata, and application logic and design. Replication between two servers, or between a client and a server, can occur over a network or a point-to-point modem connection. Replication between servers may occur at intervals according to a defined schedule, in near real-time when triggered by data changes in Domino server clusters, or on an ad-hoc basis when triggered by an administrator or programmatically.

Creation of a local replica of an NSF file on the hard disk of a Notes client enables the user of the client to take full advantage of Notes databases while working off-line — with the client synchronizing any changes when client and server next connect. Local replicas are also sometimes maintained for use while connected to the network in order to reduce network latency. Replication between a Notes client and Domino server can run automatically according to a schedule, or manually in response to a user or programmatic request. Local replicas on early releases of the Notes client did not always maintain all security features programmed into the applications, but starting with Notes 6 enforcement of application security is automatic for all local replicas. Early releases also did not offer a way to encrypt NSF files, raising concerns that local replicas potentially exposed too much confidential data on laptops or insecure home office computers,^{[citation needed]} but an optional encryption feature for NSF files was added in more recent releases, and as of Notes 6 it is the default setting for newly created local replicas.

Security

Notes was the first widely adopted software product to use public key cryptography for client-server and server-server authentication and for encryption of data, and it remains the product with the largest installed base of PKI users.^{[citation needed][dubious – discuss]} Until US laws regulating encryption were changed in 2000, Lotus was prohibited from exporting versions of Notes that supported symmetric encryption keys that were longer than 40 bits. In 1997, Lotus negotiated an agreement with the NSA that allowed export of a version that supported stronger keys with 64 bits, but 24 of the bits were encrypted with a special key and included in the message to provide a "workload reduction factor" for the NSA. The effect of this was that users of Notes outside of the US had stronger protection against private sector industrial espionage, but no additional protection against spying by the US government.^[2] This implementation was not a secret - in fact it was widely announced - but with some justification many people did consider it to be a backdoor. Some governments objected to being put at a disadvantage to the NSA, and as a result Lotus continued to support the 40 bit version for export to those countries.

Under current US export laws, Lotus supports only one version of the Notes PKI with 128 bit symmetric keys, 1024 bit public keys, and no workload reduction factor. The Domino server's security tools also include S/MIME, SSL 3.0 support with industry standard key sizes for HTTP and other Internet protocols, X.509 client certificates, and an integrated certificate authority.

Lotus also employs a code-signature framework that controls the security context, runtime, and rights of custom code developed and introduced into the environment. With Release 5, Lotus introduced Execution Control Lists at the Client level - starting with 6, ECL's can be managed centrally by server administrators through the implementation of Policies. Code signatures are often regarded as the reason there has not been a virus capable of propagating natively through a Notes/Domino environment since release 4.5. (This point is debatable, as it can also be argued that viruses are not written for Notes because it does not enjoy the wide deployment to consumer desktops that Microsoft Outlook has).

Programming

Notes/Domino is a cross-platform, secure, distributed document-oriented database and messaging framework and rapid application development environment that includes pre-built applications like email, calendar, etc. This sets it apart from its major commercial competitors, such as Microsoft Exchange or Novell GroupWise, which are generally purpose-built applications for mail and calendaring that offer APIs for extensibility.

Lotus Domino databases are built using the Domino Designer client, available only for Windows; while standard user clients are available for Windows, Linux, and Mac^[3]. A key feature of Notes is that many replicas of the same database can exist at the same time on different servers and clients, across dissimilar platforms, and the same storage architecture is used for both client and server replicas. Originally, replication in Notes happened at document (i.e. record) level. With release of Notes 4 in 1996, replication was changed so that it now occurs at field level.

A database is an NSF (Notes Storage Facility) file, containing basic units of storage known as a "note". Every note has a UniqueID and a NoteID. The UniqueID uniquely identifies the note across all replicas within a cluster of servers, a domain of servers, or even across domains belonging to many organizations that are all hosting replicas of the same database. The NoteID, on the other hand, is unique to the note only within the context of one given replica. Each note also stores its creation and modification dates, and one or more Items.

There are several classes of notes, including design notes and document notes. Design notes, which are created and modified with the Domino Designer client, represent programmable elements, such as the GUI layout of forms for displaying and editing data, or formulas and scripts for manipulating data. Document notes, which are created and modified with the Lotus Notes client, via a web browser, via mail routing and delivery, or via programmed code, represent user data.

Document notes can have parent-child relationships, but Notes should not be considered a hierarchical database in the classic sense of IMS. Notes databases are also not relational, although there is a SQL driver that can be used with Notes, and it does have some features that can be used to develop applications that mimic relational features. There is no support for atomic transactions in Notes, and its file locking is rudimentary at best. Notes is a Document-oriented database (document-based, schemaless, loosely structured) with support for rich content and powerful indexing facilities. This structure closely mimics paper-based workflows that Lotus Notes is typically used to automate.

Items represent the content of a note. Every item has a name, a type, and may optionally have some flags set. A note can have more than one item with the same name. Types include Number, Number List, Text, Text List, Date-Time, Date-Time List, and Rich Text. Flags are used for managing attributes associated with the item, such as read or write security. Items in design notes represent the programmed elements of a database. For example, the layout of an entry form is stored in the rich text Body item within a form design note. This means that the design of the database can replicate to users' desktops just like the data itself, making it extremely easy to deploy updated applications.

Items in document notes represent user-entered or computed data. An item named "Form" in a document note can be used to bind a document to a form design note, which directs the Lotus Notes client to merge the content of the document note items with the GUI information and code represented in the given form design note for display and editing purposes. The resulting loose binding of documents to design information is one of the cornerstones of the power of Lotus Notes. Traditional database developers used to working with rigidly enforced schemas, on the other hand, may consider the power of this feature to be a double-edged sword.

Notes applications development uses several programming languages. Formula and LotusScript are the two main ones. LotusScript is similar to, and may even be considered a specialized implementation of, Visual Basic, but with the addition of many powerful native classes that model the Notes environment, whereas Formula is unique to Notes but similar to Lotus 1-2-3 formula language.

Since Release 5, Java and JavaScript are also integrated into Lotus Notes. LotusScript is the primary tool in developing applications for the Notes client, as well as server-based processing. Java and JavaScript are the primary tools for developing applications for browser access, allowing browsers to emulate the functionality of the Notes client. The Notes client can now natively process Java and JavaScript code, although applications development usually requires at least some code specific to only Notes or only a browser. However, the Mac client does not support Java and the Windows client usually does not support the most recent version of Java.

As of version 6, Lotus established an XML programming interface in addition to the options already available. The Domino XML Language (DXL) provides XML representations of all data and design resources in the Notes model, allowing any XML processing tool to create and modify Notes/Domino data.

External to the Lotus Notes application, IBM provides toolkits in C, C++, and Java to connect to the Domino database and perform a wide variety of tasks. The C toolkit is the most mature and the C++ toolkit is an objectized version of the C toolkit, lacking many functions the C toolkit provides. The Java toolkit is the least mature of the three and can be used for basic application needs.

Database

Notes includes a DBMS but Notes files are different from relational or object databases since they are document centric. Document-oriented databases such as Notes allow multiple values in items (fields), don't require a schema, come with built-in document-level access control and store RichText data. There are some Object-Relational features being developed and Domino 7 supported a restricted release add-on allowing the use of IBM's DB2 database as an alternative store for Notes databases. With Domino 8 this is available without a special request. You can map a Notes database to a relational database using tools like DECS, [LEI], JDBCSql for Domino or NotesSQL.

It could be argued that Notes is a multi-value database system like PICK, or that it's an object system like Zope, but it is in fact unique. Whereas the temptation for relational database programmers is to normalize databases, Notes databases must be denormalized. RDBMS developers often find it difficult to conceptualize the difference. It may be useful to think of a Notes document (a 'note') as analogous to an XML document natively stored in a database (although with limitations on the data types and structures available).

The benefits of this data structure are:

1. No need to define size of fields, or datatype;
2. Attributes (Notes fields) that are null take up no space in a database;
3. Built-in full text searching.

Use as an email client

Lotus Notes is commonly deployed as an end-user email client in larger organizations, with IBM claiming a cumulative 140 million licenses sold to date. (IBM does not release the number of licenses on current maintenance, nor does it track number of licenses in current use.)

When an organization employs a Lotus Domino server, it usually also deploys Lotus Notes for its users to read mail and use databases. However, the Domino server also supports POP3 and IMAP mail clients, and through an extension product (Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook) supports native access for Microsoft Outlook clients. Lotus also provides Domino Web Access, to allow the use of email and calendaring features through Internet Explorer and Firefox web browsers on Windows, Mac and Linux. There are several spam filtering programs available, and a rules engine allowing user-defined mail processing to be performed by the server.

How Notes differs from other email clients

Lotus Notes was designed to be a collaborative application platform where email was just one of numerous applications that ran in the Notes client software. Lotus lore has it that the first mail inbox application written by Lotus was a proof-of-concept for a sales presentation. The Notes client was also designed to run on multiple platforms including Windows, OS/2, Mac, SCO Open Desktop UNIX, and Linux. These two factors have resulted in the user interface containing some differences from applications that only run on Windows. Furthermore these differences have often remained in the product to retain backward compatibility with earlier releases, instead of conforming to Windows UI standards. The following are some of these differences.

• Properties dialog boxes for formatting text, hyperlinks and other rich-text information can remain open after changes are made to the selected text. This provides great flexibility to select new text and apply other formatting without closing the dialog box, selecting new text and opening a new format dialog box. Almost all other Windows applications require the user to close the dialog box, select new text, then open a new dialog box for formatting/changes.
• Properties dialog boxes also automatically recognize the type of text selected and display the appropriate selections, for instance, a hyperlink properties box when appropriate.
• Tables can be formatted as tabbed interfaces as part of form design (for applications) or by users within mail messages (or in rich-text fields in applications). This provides users the ability to provide tab-style organization to documents, similar to popular tab navigation in most web portals, etc.
• Links to Notes applications, views or documents can be easily inserted into Notes documents.
• The nearly instantaneous full-text searching was available in Notes before other email applications, including Outlook.

• Deleting a document (or email) will delete it from every folder in which it appears, since the folders simply contain links to the same back-end document. Some other email clients only delete the email from the current folder; if the email appears in other folders it is left alone, requiring the user to hunt through multiple folders in order to completely delete a message. In Notes, clicking on "Remove from Folder" will remove the document only from that folder leaving all other instances intact.

• The All Documents and Sent folders exhibit some different behaviors than other folders. Namely, you cannot drag email out of them and thereby remove the email from those folders; the email can only be "copied" from them. This is because these two folders are not, in fact, folders at all: they are views. Their membership indexes are maintained according to programmed criteria rather than user interaction (as with a folder). This technical difference is baffling or irritating to most users, but it apparently makes sense to programmers. All Documents contain all of the documents in your mail database, no matter which folder it is in. The only way to remove something from All Documents is to delete it outright. Also, an email message cannot be removed from Sent, since that would imply that a message that used to be sent was no longer ever sent, which does not make sense.

Lotus Notes 7 and older versions had more differences:

• Users select a "New Memo" to send an email, rather than "New Mail" or "New Message." (In Notes 8, the command is called "New Message.")

• To select multiple documents in a Notes view, you drag your mouse next to the documents that you want to select, rather than using ⇧ Shift+single click. (Notes 8 uses standard conventions.)

• The searching function is a "phrase search", rather than the more common "or search", and Notes requires users to spell out boolean conditions in search string. As a result, users must search for ‘delete AND folder’ in order to find help text that contains the phrase ‘delete a folder’. Searching for ‘delete folder’ does not yield the desired result. (Notes 8 uses standard conventions.)

Like all popular commercial software packages, Lotus Notes has its detractors as well as supporters. Critics assert that there are dedicated email clients that are simpler, more intuitive and have a lower purchase price. Proponents argue that richer capabilities and advanced programmability are available, and that purchase price is a small fraction of total cost of ownership. Many of the differences mentioned above are seen by some as weaknesses in the product, especially when the user interface is compared to Windows-only applications.

Later releases of the product have made great headway in addressing end-user complaints.

Notes 8.0 (released in 2007) was the first version that employed a full user-experience team Mary Beth Raven Blog, resulting in a greatly improved Notes client experience. Additionally, Notes 8.0 now runs in the open source Eclipse Framework, opening up nearly unlimited application development opportunities through the use of Eclipse plug-ins. The improved user experience builds on Notes 6.5 (released in 2003), which upgraded the e-mail client, previously regarded as the product's Achilles heel. Features added at that time included:

• drag and drop of folders
• replication of unread marks between servers
• follow-up flags
• reply and forward indicators on emails
• ability to edit an attachment and save the changes back to an e-mail

Criticisms

Criticisms of the product include:

• Many end users, particularly those mainly using it for emailing, have complained that aspects of the graphical user interface are unintuitive.^{[4] [5]} Some of the more common criticisms of older versions have been addressed in more recent versions.
• Some end users also complain about the excessive number of mouse clicks needed to perform basic functions, and the poor design of keyboard alternatives.^{[citation needed]}
• Prior to Release 8.0, the out-of-office feature was designed to limit traffic by sending out-of-office messages at 2 am (by default) instead of immediately after messages are received, giving the initial impression that it did not work at all. Recent releases have increased the frequency of out-of-office messages to once every few hours. As of Release 8.0, administrators can configure the system to send out-of-office messages immediately.
• Setting up archiving for the first time was complex, and often did not create an archive file straight away (the file is created when the first email is archived). This may have led some users to believe it did not work.^{[citation needed]}
• Some users get confused between the "Starts with" search and the full text search features offered in the Notes UI, the former of which will only search on data that is visible in the currently sorted column of the visible folder. The product's defenders point out that the optional full text search feature has provided superior searching in Notes since the early 1990s, whereas rival Microsoft Outlook only provided that feature starting with the 2007 version, relying on third-party external plug-ins to provide similar functionality before that.
• It is difficult to read your Notes email from a standalone NSF file with any other software. The defenders point out that the same is true with some other systems as well. For example, you need the Outlook client to read PST files. However, this is also a security feature in that Notes NSF data files can only be read by an authenticated user, and the model also allows for high-level encryption of data files, accessible only to those authorised, using appropriately certificated clients or working on certain domains.
• It is hard to get the regular email address of someone that has sent an email to you if this person is from your Organization (in the Notes directory), because Notes does not display email addresses, but rather specific Notes addresses like "Mike Smith/San Jose/ABC Company". The defenders point out that you can look that up in the company wide name and address book which is a part of any Notes installation, and that you normally don't need to know the external address of an internal person.
• A loss of network connection while Lotus Notes is running will sometimes cause Notes to pop up multiple dialog boxes displaying the same generic "Server not responding" error message. On the other hand, because of the 'replication' architecture inherent to the Notes/Domino model, it is possible to work effectively and quite independently of a network connection on a 'replica' database which will catch up with the server when next connected.
• Not very descriptive error messages like "file not found" or no error messages at all.
• Although the program allows users to open multiple tabs to operate on different databases, views and documents simultaneously, some operations that can take a long time are executed in foreground, preventing users from being able to switch to other tabs to continue working on other tasks.
• When Notes terminates unexpectedly on Microsoft Windows, it can leave some resources loaded and/or locked, making it impossible to restart Notes without rebooting the system or running one of several available utilities to free the resources.
• Lotus Notes suffers from almost a complete lack of CSS support. In fact, Lotus Notes is second only to Eudora in lack of CSS support, complicating the creation display of cross-browser HTML email.^[6].

History

Lotus Notes has a history spanning more than 20 years.^[7] Its chief inspiration was PLATO Notes, created by David Woolley at the University of Illinois in 1973. In today's terminology, PLATO Notes was a message board, and it was the basis for an online community which thrived for more than 20 years on the PLATO system. Ray Ozzie worked with PLATO while attending the University of Illinois in the 1970s. When PC network technology began to emerge, Ozzie made a deal with Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development Corporation, that resulted in the formation of Iris Associates in 1984 to develop products that would combine the capabilities of PCs with the collaborative tools pioneered in PLATO. The agreement put control of product development under Ozzie and Iris, and sales and marketing under Lotus. In 1994, after the release and marketplace success of Notes R3, Lotus purchased Iris. In 1995 IBM purchased Lotus.

When Lotus Notes was initially released, the name "Notes" referred to both the client and server components. In 1996, Lotus released an HTTP server add-on for the Notes 4 server called "Domino". This add-on allowed Notes documents to be rendered as web pages in real time. Later that year, the Domino web server was integrated into release 4.5 of the core Notes server and the entire server program was re-branded, taking on the name "Domino". Only the client program officially retained the "Lotus Notes" name, however end users are generally unaware of this differentiation, so even though more than ten years has passed since the re-branding, references to the "Lotus Notes Server" are still fairly common.

Lotus Notes 5 client workspace

IBM Lotus Notes 6.5 default Welcome Page

Lotus Notes Wikipedia article in Lotus Notes 6.5

IBM Lotus Notes 7 customized Welcome Page

Versions

Lotus Notes donated parts of code to OpenOffice.org^[9] on September 12, 2007.

Future

This article or section contains information about scheduled or expected future software. The content may change as the software release approaches and more information becomes available.

Since the IBM acquisition of Lotus, some industry analysts and mainstream business press writers, along with IBM competitors, have made predictions of the impending demise of Lotus Notes. One noted example of this was an article published in Forbes magazine entitled "The decline and fall of Lotus", published in April 1998. Since that time, IBM claims that the installed base of Lotus Notes has increased from an estimated 42 million seats in September 1998^{[citation needed]} to approximately 140 million cumulative licenses sold through 2008. (IBM does not publish the number of licenses on current maintenance. Additionally, Lotus users who no longer pay maintenance are permitted to keep using the software -- they are simply not permitted to install subsequent releases.)

Speculation about the decline of Notes was fueled by lingering market confusion emanating from IBM placing marketing emphasis on Websphere and IBM Workplace in 2003 and 2004. IBM Workplace, however, has been discontinued^[10], thus this source of confusion about the future of Notes and Domino has been rendered moot. While the future of any product in the technology sector cannot be predicted, IBM has made announcements that indicate that it continues to invest heavily in research and development on the Lotus Notes product line.

Notes 8, which was previously code-named "Hannover" (after the location of the 22nd Deutsche Notes User Group meeting, where it was first shown to the public) incorporates Notes into a larger Eclipse framework and includes support for productivity editors based on the OpenDocument format.^[11] (These editors have also been released in a standalone package called Lotus Symphony.) In addition, IBM executive Ken Bisconti has made public comments on several occasions asserting that there will be releases 8, 9 and 10 of Notes and Domino.^[12]

In 2005, some analysts concluded that Lotus is losing market share to Microsoft Exchange.^[13] There is no general agreement, however, about methods of accurately calculating share in the messaging and collaboration market.^[14] Figures based on seat count may be skewed by the presence of unused seats that are counted as a result of "bundled CALs", and figures based on customer count may be skewed by difference in typical customer organization sizes. IBM has asserted that growth shown in the revenue figures for the Lotus brand, as published in their audited annual financial report, show the continuing strength of the Lotus Notes product in the market. According to these figures, the Notes and Domino product line has sustained double-digit growth since late 2004 and continuing through 2006, including 30% year-to-year growth in Q4 of 2006.

IBM contributed some of the code it had developed for the integration of the OpenOffice.org suite into Lotus Notes 8 back to the project^[15]. IBM also packaged its version of Open Office for free distribution as IBM Lotus Symphony^[16]. Notes/Domino 8.0.1 shipped in February 2008^[17], with 8.0.2 coming in the summer. Version 8.5, which includes a Mac client, support for Ubuntu 7.10 in addition to Red Hat Linux and SUSE Linux, as well as an Eclipse-based Domino Designer, will be available during the second half of 2008, according to IBM^[18]. Version 8.5, in beta in summer 2008, offers a new Ajax-enabled web programming paradigm called XPages^[19].

See also

• List of IBM products
• Comparison of e-mail clients
• IBM Lotus Domino

References

External links

• Lotus Notes Homepage
• Global Lotus User Group Web Site
• Lotus Domino Product Documentation
• Lotus Notes Product Documentation
• Lotus Developer Domain: Products, E-Zine, Downloads, Discussion Forums, Documentation
• The History of Notes and Domino
• IBM Redbooks - Lotus Books on Lotus Notes and Domino, written by IBM staff, IBM business partners and customers
• OpenNTF.org: Open Source Lotus Notes/Domino applications
• Plato: The Emergence of Online Community David R. Woolley's description of PLATO Notes.
• Lotus Notes Hints, Tips, and Tricks
• Planet Lotus: blog aggregator for Lotus Notes and Domino
• Idea Exchange site on how to improve IBM Lotus products
• Taking Notes Podcast
• A library of code snippets, techniques, and reusable design elements